Light Start – LED pigeons, SpaceX lands again, Nvidia’s new GPUs, and a Pi tube
Brett Venter
Putting LEDs on pigeons is a Fly By Night venture
Okay, so we’ve seen people doing this with drones but at what point does mounting LEDs on verminous birds become a good idea? When you’re an artist, like New York’s David Riley, then you’re going do it and people are going to make reservations to see it happen. No, seriously. There’s a specific viewing area for the event, which is called Fly By Night, which runs until 12 June. Viewers will see LED-fitted pigeons as they trace their way around the night skies in New York after they’re released from an old ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The birds won’t just be out and about afterwards either, they’re trained to return to their launch point once the show is over. Still, good luck controlling all of them at once.
SpaceX touches down in the ocean for a second time. At night.
SpaceX is just going to keep trying until it’s nailed this reusable rocket thing. Over the weekend the company stuck another landing, putting a Falcon 9 rocket on the ground. Well, on a barge in the ocean. This is the second rocket that SpaceX has successfully landed. Big whoop, right? Nobody remembers second place, but this rocket is unusual in that the landing was done at night and it had the added hassles of touching down at a higher speed and with less fuel than the company’s first successful touchdown. By most accounts, SpaceX was expected to fail with this landing, as it has in the past. Instead, it’s getting better, and Mars is getting closer as a result.
Nvidia has been sneaky of late. It surprised most of us with an event late last week that ended with a new set of GPUs being announced. One of those was the GTX 1080, the company’s newest flagship which just made your shiny new GTX 980 second-best. The 1080 cuts down on power usage from the company’s previous monster, the Titan X, and manages to throw more power at your PC at the same time. Since we’re going to need it for VR, we’re not complaining. The 1080 will be launching internationally at the end of this month. The stock version will retail for $599 (around R9,000) but there’s an overclocking edition on the way that will set buyers back $699 (R10,350). Soon after will come the GTX 1070, which will also have a stock and overclocking edition to play with, at reduced prices. Time for an upgrade?
Your Raspberry Pi really needs its own tube amplifier – Trust us
The Raspberry Pi is an unusual piece of equipment, an educational tool that has exploded into a hobbyist’s dream. They’ve been sent to space so why not take the multi-use capability a few steps higher. There’s a crowdfunding campaign on at present that aims to bring a hybrid vacuum tube amplifier to the Pi and… well… just hit the link below and look at it. The initiative hopes to raise $20,000 to bring the tube amp, the 503HTA, to market and it’s more than doubled that total already. If you really want to up your Pi’s sound output game, you might want to throw your cash into the ring as well.
